Interviews

Giuliani: Obama 'broke trust' with American people

This is a rush transcript from "Your World," March 6, 2013. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.

NEIL CAVUTO, HOST: Any updates we have on Sixth Avenue or anything that could even hint of any Armageddon -- oh, my gosh, things looking way too calm on the Avenue of the Americas. But that could change at a moment's notice outside News Corp., Fox News headquarters here.

Oh, sure, it looks calm to you, but somewhere down there is an errant nut no doubt without his meds. And we're on top of it, whatever.

(LAUGHTER)

CAVUTO: All right, I make light of something that actually is pretty scary, when our highest authorities are trying to scare us. If the scary stuff doesn't materialize, is the White House scared that this president then gets marginalized?

The former Republican presidential candidate and the mayor of this fine city of New York who was deemed by New Yorkers to be the best mayor they ever had. And this is a tough lot. They hate everybody.

(LAUGHTER)

CAVUTO: Mayor, good to have you.

FORMER MAYOR RUDOLPH GIULIANI, R - NYC: Good to be with you.

CAVUTO: What do you make of this?

GIULIANI: Make of the sequester?

CAVUTO: Yes.

GIULIANI: I think the president erred really seriously here.

It really goes to his credibility. He spent a month on the stump telling us all the dire consequences, how terrible this is, how awful.

CAVUTO: They're not coming true.

GIULIANI: Of course, you and I turn out to be correct. He turns out to be misleading.

I was on your show last week and we both said 2.5 percent of a cut from an increase is hardly going to have any impact.

CAVUTO: And it wasn't even 2.5 percent.

GIULIANI: Yeah, it's actually less than that.

And also it's a cut from an increase. How the heck is it going to have dire consequences?

CAVUTO: But now he has got to justify it after the fact, right, or does he just say, all right, steady as she goes, I'm still worried? What does he do?

(CROSSTALK)

GIULIANI: I think the president has done something really seriously damaging.

You can't break trust with the American people. And I don't care how much the media tries to defend him. He broke trust with the American people. You don't go out and deliberately mislead, as President of the United States, for a political purpose.

And it looks like there is a whole political purpose here that's even bigger than we realize. It's trying to take back Congress in two years, trying to put Nancy Pelosi back in charge of the Congress. I think that was the whole purpose of the big fight over the fiscal cliff and taking a very hard position, trying to make Republicans look bad.

I think it was the whole reason for exaggerating the sequester, of course, really strange since he was the one who suggested the sequester. He also misrepresented about that, and Bob Woodward got that call.

CAVUTO: And he also knew the cuts that would be coming and the wide degree of latitude he would be given in the last budget agreement, even while Republicans were off and -- be that as it may, here we are now.

And I'm wondering, even though you could argue it sounds like he is crying wolf right now, things will slow down, something will hiccup along the way.

GIULIANI: Of course.

CAVUTO: And he's going to go back to Republicans producing that calamity they could have avoided.

GIULIANI: He is going to work hard to try to produce one.

CAVUTO: Will it work? Will it work?

GIULIANI: No, it won't work. We need to cut more than the $85 billion. We need to cut considerably more in order to deal with the long- term trajectory of our deficit.

It's enormous. The rating agencies are still talking about possibly downgrading us because our fiscal situation is so irresponsible.

CAVUTO: And, by the way, a lot of them welcomed the sequestration cuts, I think one of them calling them sloppy and not the way to do things, but better than doing nothing.

GIULIANI: A lot better than wasting money.

CAVUTO: Right. Right.

Well, what do you make of what has been cut for now? I think White House tours -- last time I checked, that's the people's house. Maybe you don't like people traipsing through your house. But that's odd.

CAVUTO: Well, but I'm saying he is sort of, you know, olive branch and then a stick to poke you.

GIULIANI: It's not working.

(CROSSTALK)

GIULIANI: This particular time, he didn't roll the Republicans. That whole four-week thing was to try to get the Republicans to cave in on the sequester.

CAVUTO: Right.

GIULIANI: The way to some extent they caved in on the fiscal cliff. Right? That kind of worked. But he had just been elected. They hadn't gotten their act together yet.

But Republicans were Rockford granite on this. They didn't buy any of this garbage. They were not snowed by him.

They stood their ground. They said if you are not going to significantly reduce spending, if you are not going to present us with some alternatives that get us to that $85 billion because we at a minimum have to do that, we are just going to say no.

And I think Republicans came out of this looking much, much better than they have in quite some time.

But do you think, from having to accept and swallow tax increases at the beginning of the year, that that was their sort of Waterloo, they said, all right, that -- we have given you what you wanted, Mr. President, the rest is on you?

(CROSSTALK)

GIULIANI: And now -- well, we gave you what you wanted. We gave you big revenue increases, right? Big revenue increases.

Now, you have got to give us cuts, because, you say it's a combination of revenue and cuts. Well, where are the cuts? And the reality...

CAVUTO: Because you heard Gene Sperling last week, the guy with the infamous e-mails, but who said, no, what John Boehner originally talked about with the president was a trillion dollars in tax hikes, ended up getting about $600 billion over 10 years, as you know.

So, by his math, by the administration's math, the Republicans owe another $400 billion.

GIULIANI: No, no, no, but the president was talking about $4 trillion in cuts when Boehner was talking about a trillion. It was going -- remember...

(CROSSTALK)

CAVUTO: Well, they have all devolved.

GIULIANI: It was going to a 3-1 or 4-1 match for every -- for a trillion dollars in revenue, there was going to be $3 trillion to $4 trillion in cuts.

I don't like raising taxes. But if you give me a 4-1 deal, that's a deal maybe I can make.

CAVUTO: You would consider.

GIULIANI: Yeah.

CAVUTO: It ended up being 40-1 the other way around.

GIULIANI: Yeah. So, the president is playing games here.

And I think in the last two days, we see the big picture. The big picture is he never stopped campaigning. And now he is campaigning to try to get himself a Republican (sic) House in two years. This is all intended to try to destroy the Republican Party and get Nancy Pelosi back there, so he can raise taxes even more, so he can raise spending even more, so he can pass his very, very left-wing agenda.

CAVUTO: Well, we shall see what happens.

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